This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented, or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Currently, the performance of transportation structures, such as intersections, is evaluated by fixed sensors, such as loop detectors, ultra-sonic vehicle detectors, and cameras. These sensors are expensive to deploy and maintain. Furthermore, they usually cover a small portion of a transportation network such as select highway segments.
Another existing method to evaluate transportation structures is via microscopic traffic simulations. This method is usually used for cost-benefit analysis before a structure is built. This method needs reliable calibration of parameters such as traffic arrival rate, distribution of turns, traffic flow rules, and car following rules. These parameters are usually difficult to calibrate.
Recently there have been studies on analyzing intersection delays using location traces, and another body of work defines the boundary of a transportation structure using virtual trip lines (VTL). As described in more detail below, each of these has problems that could be improved upon.